ANZCO Foods has been operating from the Waitara plant since 2004, establishing a reputation for manufacturing high-quality food through two state-of-the-art processing plants. The company is the sole supplier of McDonald’s chain of fast food restaurants throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and also supplies products on request to McDonald’s in Indonesia.
The second plant is known as ANZCO Gourmet Foods, which supplies unbranded jerky products to two large US-based customers — Old Trapper, one of the fastest-growing jerky companies in the US, and Costco. “We mainly manufacture only one flavor for Old Trapper, which is teriyaki,” says Site Manager Jacques Jordaan. “We ship the product in bulk to Old Trapper in Oregon where they further process it and put it into retail packaging for the US consumers. For Costco, we supply jerky to Japan, Australia, the UK and France. We supply a liver product which is diced and minced to the UK for a specific customer and also manufactures raw mince for local customers.”
Each year, the Waitara plants manufacture 1,200 tonnes of jerky, 500 tonnes of raw mince and diced product and 7,500 tonnes of patties (600,000 patties a day). The meat that goes into the high-quality products primarily comes from ANZCO’s processing plant in Eltham, along with AFFCO and Silver Fern Farms. “For our hamburgers, we use all beef trims that have come off the carcass during processing. There’s a strict recipe we use to develop the patties for McDonald’s, which cannot have more than 24.7% fat content. For the jerky, we use prime topside beef with the fat trimmed off. We use beef trims for the mince and diced products.”
“In addition to good career development opportunities within the production areas and coolstore, there are apprenticeships in engineering, mechanical and electrical.”
Employing a team of 250, of which 188 are employed directly in production, ANZCO Foods is the largest employer in Waitara township and one of the largest in the region. Within the production team, there are about 48 immigrants from Vietnam and Indonesia, under the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme.
“As our team has grown in size and a positive culture developed, we’ve enjoyed very low staff turnover. Over the last six months, there have been a lot of people knocking on the door seeking opportunities. Team members start as operators on the floor and can move into more senior roles if they demonstrate the ability and willingness to learn. As they step further up into management, we put them on development courses and training so they can move into a salaried supervisory role, looking after an entire shift.”
“I now have two people in those roles who have started on the floor. In addition to good career development opportunities within the production areas and coolstore, there are apprenticeships in engineering, mechanical and electrical. This year, we have our first female apprentice electrician. There are also careers in support services like quality assurance and compliance audit.”
In 2022, ANZCO Foods Waitara was approached by the Taranaki office of the House of Science, a Tauranga-based charitable trust that operates throughout the country, providing science resource kits for children covering a diverse range of disciplines, to support schools in science education. “The Taranaki office wanted to know if we would sponsor a science kit, which is around $2,500, which we felt was a very good opportunity. Our sponsorship is for a Food Science kit, teaching about different ingredients, colouring and those sorts of things.”
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